A new travel web site Travel User Guide publishes information, tips and news on everything related to travel. It is more focused on news, gear reviews, practical advice than top 10 beaches of Thailand kind of articles.

The latest articles on the site are:

– French and Spanish police are helping Portuguese officers to protect tourists on the streets of Lisbon
– A backpack is an essential piece of equipment for a traveler, but can it be a one-size-fits-all gear?
– Travel news recap: rail travel photos needed, free guidebook, traveling at home, dressing for a flight
– Instagram top 10: most photographed sights in Europe

The book Traveling in Scandinavia is a selection of chapters extracted from published travel guidebooks, cultural guides and even from a Nordic cookbook. As the publisher puts it: If something is missing, Finns will invent it (e.g. wife carrying competition), Swedes will sell it to the world (e.g. entire country available on Airbnb), and Norwegians will win the cross-country skiing world championship (again).

I didn’t know that there is a cookbook for engineers, and an entertaining one. It is more than recipes: how to organize a dinner, etiquette, and so on. Lapland has always been one of my favorites, and the book has an entire chapter on Nordkapp / North Cape which is nice. The West Coast in Sweden looks like a hidden gem that only the Swedes have discovered.

This book is all about the northern countries of Scandinavia: Finland, Norway and Sweden. Authors Kim Anton, Erin Dahl, Ari Hakkarainen, Kari Ojala, Russell Snyder and Soile Varis have contributed sections from their books to this collection.

If you are interested in the Nordic countries, and perhaps are thinking of visiting, Traveling in Scandinavia is a good book to start reading about the destination. The book includes plenty of pointers for things you may want to study further.

The Gems of Nice and the French Riviera travel guidebook focuses on the coastal section of the Alpes-Maritimes region in southeast France (also known as the Riviera or locally, Cote d’Azur). The book covers the Riviera from Cannes to Menton, describing towns like Antibes, Grasse and Monaco, In addition, the book unveils Riviera gems tourist buses haven’t discovered yet.

Riviera is not only about the sun and the sea, but it is also about spectacular mountain sceneries and exciting activities. Nice is much more than the Boulevard des Anglais – the old town, market places, galleries, restaurants and shopping streets are buzzing with locals and visitors. St Paul de Vence is advertised as the most visited medieval village, and that’s how it feels. Why not try Vence, a larger medieval village further up the mountain as the guidebook suggests?

My favorite place in the region is Antibes, but my travel companions like the mountains (Vence, Grasse) and the little bit more quiet side of the Riviera in Mandelieu.

The best thing with this travel guidebook is that it includes plenty of pictures. Some places reveal their characteristics in two or three photographs. It makes it easier to decide if a village or a town is worth a visit. All and all there are more places and things to do in the book for many weeks in southern France, even if you try to visit a new place daily.

A popular method for tourists to absorb the landscapes and sceneries of Lapland is road travel. Roads maybe few, distances long and services infrequent, but very few destinations in the world has the same variety, wildlife and rough beauty as Lapland. Nordkapp (North Cape) is the modern pilgrimage destination located at the end of the world; it is the northernmost point of Europe. In Nordkapp, the road ends into the Arctic Ocean.

Touring Lapland by car, motorbike or bicycle rarely presents a dull moment. Majestic, often lush, inland fell sceneries changes to rough and scarce Arctic landscape in the north as the Arctic Ocean gets closer. Following fell rivers that flow west introduces yet another scenery as the landscape transforms from fells to steep mountains and gorges, and picture-perfect fjords provide shelter for residents from the Atlantic Ocean.

Lapland is all about nature and respect for the environment. People who live in Lapland say they have eight seasons: first snow, Christmas, frosty winter, crusty snow, departure of ice, midnight sun, harvest season and colorful autumn. The traditional life and livelihood has been tightly coupled with seasons that have determined how reindeers have behaved, and how hunting and fishing have been conducted.